The Positive and Negative Sides of a Shot in the Dark

Photography for me is a personal exploration – it doesn’t matter to me that someone has taken a similar shot before if I haven’t tried it myself. Then when I tweak a photo it is almost always about experimentation – not ground breaking new to Photography but useful to me for my personal development. No apologies are necessary for any clichés. For me it is nearly always a Shot in the Dark.

A few nights ago I took the dog for a walk down our lane when I noticed how the grass had grown & sent up shoots. So the next night when it was pitch dark I brought my camera to test how well the X10 flash would perform as I had never used it before.

Framing was a nightmare in the dark even with a torch and Yes the flash worked ok but I normally avoid using flash whenever possible – always a last resort. For me it was a predictable failure but worth a go - the shots left a lot to be desired.

Then I experimented a bit with some shots using Reverse neg – the areas where the flash did not reach and were blacked out suddenly had a lovely haze and depth to them. With a bit of cropping & additional tweaking I started to enjoy myself.

I’ve tried and used reverse neg in the past - it has its uses, but the shots have always been broad daylight conversions whereas the flash has now added another dimension to explore. Best if I use a tripod next time.

Photography for me is a personal exploration – it doesn’t matter to me that someone has taken a similar shot before if I haven’t tried it myself. Then when I tweak a photo it is almost always about experimentation – not ground breaking new to Photography but useful to me for my personal development. No apologies are necessary for any clichés. For me it is nearly always a Shot in the Dark.

A few nights ago I took the dog for a walk down our lane when I noticed how the grass had grown & sent up shoots. So the next night when it was pitch dark I brought my camera to test how well the X10 flash would perform as I had never used it before.

Framing was a nightmare in the dark even with a torch and Yes the flash worked ok but I normally avoid using flash whenever possible – always a last resort. For me it was a predictable failure but worth a go - the shots left a lot to be desired.

Then I experimented a bit with some shots using Reverse neg – the areas where the flash did not reach and were blacked out suddenly had a lovely haze and depth to them. With a bit of cropping & additional tweaking I started to enjoy myself.

I’ve tried and used reverse neg in the past - it has its uses, but the shots have always been broad daylight conversions whereas the flash has now added another dimension to explore. Best if I use a tripod next time.

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Wow, ReD, really neat. Kinda freaky and weird but it has an ethereal quality to it that I really like.

I'm with you; i experiment with my cameras all the time. That's what I love about digital -- it's costs exactly bupkas to experiment -- and you just might surprise yourself with something really neat that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of what you shouldn't or couldn't do with a small sensor camera.

Is reverse neg a setting on your camera or something you did in post processing?

using a quick selection tool, it all happens pretty quickly (assuming the smart selection tool is grabbing the right stuff). You really just add a color (say green for the grass) and the various shades of gray (or light levels) create some different greens. It looks very different from the original, but can look pretty cool.

here's a VERY rudimentary one I did (my first try following a tutorial years ago). It was just a b/w snapshot of my wife and I at a faux wedding ceremony we held for our families a couple months after we were married by a judge. It has an old-timey I look I enjoy.hand tinted old photo by Luke Lavin, on Flickr

I think you could also replicate it in lightroom etc by simply converting to B&W (desaturating) and then mirroring the tone curve; making it go from top left to bottom right.

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Pretty much. You don't have to use the desaturation slider, you can simply click "black and white"

The tone curve - set to "linear" first; then you have to click on the little "point curve" icon at the bottom right of the tone curve first - this collapses the "region" slider menu; then you grab each end of the curve by turn by mouse and drag it down to the bottom (RHS) and top (LHS). (This can be a bit annoying and frustrating to get right, so eventually I made a preset for it).

At this point you have a linearly inverted image in black and white. the tone curve can now be dragged around to change the shape at will, but the Blacks/Whites/Shadows/Highlights sliders in the Basic menu don't work the same any more - they too are inverted (this can take a bit of thinking about, but you'll soon suss it out).

Remember that if you then apply any presets that use modified tone curves, they will reset the image back to a positive.